* * * * *

Too little was heard during the war of the work of the American submarines, but they performed most efficient and useful service.  A sketch of the life aboard one of these little vessels follows.

WITH THE AMERICAN SUBMARINES

HENRY B. BESTON

[Sidenote:  A view of the Embankment.]

A London day of soft and smoky skies, darkened every now and then by capricious and intrusive little showers, was drawing to a close in a twilight of gold and gray.  Our table stood in a bay of plate-glass windows overlooking the Embankment close by Cleopatra’s Needle.  We watched the little double-decked tram-cars gliding by, the opposing, interthreading streams of pedestrians, and a fleet of coal barges coming up the river, solemn as a cloud.

[Sidenote:  Submarine folk are a people apart.]

Behind us lay, splendid and somewhat theatric, the mottled marble, stiff white napery, and bright silver of a fashionable dining-hall.  Only a few guests were at hand.  At our little table sat the captain of a submarine who was then in London for a few days on richly merited leave, a distinguished young officer of the “mother ship” accompanying our underwater craft, and myself.  It is impossible to be long with submarine folk without realizing that they are a people apart, differing from the rest of the naval personnel even as their vessels differ.  A man must have something individual to his character to volunteer for the service, and every officer is a volunteer.  An extraordinary power of quick decision, a certain keen, resolute look, a certain carriage; submarine folk are such men as all of us like to have by our side in any great trial or crisis of our life.

Guests began to come by twos and threes—­pretty girls in shimmering dresses, young army officers with wound-stripes and clumsy limps.  A faint murmur of conversation rose, faint and continuous as the murmur of a distant stream.

Because I requested him, the captain told me of the crossing of the submarines.  It was the epic of an heroic journey.

[Sidenote:  How the submarines crossed the Atlantic.]

[Sidenote:  The mother-ship and submarines leave.]

“After each boat had been examined in detail, we began to fill them with supplies for the voyage.  The crew spent days manoeuvring cases of condensed milk, cans of butter, meat, and chocolate, down the hatchways—­food which the boat swallowed up as if she had been a kind of steel stomach.  Until we had it all neatly and tightly stowed away, the Z looked like a corner grocery store.  Then, early one December morning, we pulled out of the harbor.  It wasn’t very cold, merely raw and damp, and it was misty dark.  I remember looking at the winter stars riding high just over the meridian.  The port behind us was still and dead, but a handful of navy-folk had come to one of